Spouse-free

So Spouse is back in Central State today for a couple of meetings and to do a bit on the house.

Bun was up bright and early at 6, so, so was I. She is almost always sweet and happy, so I am glad to see her, but I was also glad to see the coffee maker this morning.

My looming guilt at the things I am not getting done* is increasing enough that even though this is summer, and therefore it's a super bummer to have to read about these things, I am going to start putting things here. Somehow, boring you makes me more accountable.

1. Figure out the rest of my syllabi for the fall
2. Learn Basketweaving software package #1
3. Learn Basketweaving software package #2
4. Make poster for conference at end of summer
5. Finish out the funding for the Grad students at PrettyGood and be done with it once and for all


*I sometimes fantasize about having one of those jobs that you leave at 5 and don't think about at all until the next morning. Then I remember that at least I get to do stuff on my own schedule during the summer.

Getting concerned

So Spouse is headed back to Central State this afternoon. He is still employed at PrettyGood, and will be going to the summer retreat (which I think is kind of pointless, since they are planning for next year, but no one asked me) and dusting and doing other stuff at the house. We've had the house showed a grand total of twice in 3 weeks, so the realtor is holding an open house this afternoon. I don't think that will help, but we'll see. She felt that the market slows way down for a couple of weeks right after school gets out, because a lot of people go on vacation. Fortunately, we don't need the money out of the house to get established in New State, so we can wait.

One thing I am not happy about waiting for is Spouse's contract for next year. Still no news on that front.

Happy Birthday to Offspring

Our big girl turns 11 today.

Cheatza

I am super cranky tonight, so I made this for dinner

1 pack whole wheat english muffins
1 jar good marinara sauce
1 red pepper
1 yellow pepper
1 sweet onion (Vidalia type or whatever you have near you)
1 jar kalamata olive pieces
1 pack feta cheese
1 can mushroom stems and pieces, drained
1 pack shredded, low-fat mozzarella

Chop about 1/4 each of the 2 peppers and the onion. Put it in the micro on high for 2 minutes. Split the muffins and broil the backs on high until the kitchen smells toasty. Flip 'em. Top with a few spoons of sauce and whatever of the toppings you and your kids will stand. Back under the broiler until the cheese melts. Eat with carrot sticks or something else easy.

Dear Bun

Please take a nap so I can get some work done.

Love, Mom

I'm getting a little panicky

So I think the endless, crushing, overhanging academic guilt has found me. I have been doing a bit of work this summer, but it's mostly been of the "look up the calendars for our 4 schools and put them into a Google Calendar" variety. Unfortunately, doing this has put me in front of the fact that I really have about 5 free weeks left to prepare for fall classes, the big conference in my field (2 papers), etc. And somewhere in there, I have to take care of my kids and give them a good summer and, oh yeah, get moved.

The minutae to get everything to everything in place so Offspring can go to school and we can all have a place to live has been both time consuming and grating. Plus, the software I need to use to teach basketweaving CAD is being reissued this summer, so I need to learn it, but it's not coming out until the middle of next month and the usually learning tools like books and on-line demos won't be out until then either.

Frustrating.

I think I will write a syllabus outline for my classes tonight.

We're getting there

Just back from town between where I am definitely working and where wesurehopethestatebudgetdoesn'tscrewusoverbutatthemomentwebelievespouseisworking.

We had to go to Hogwarts again, because we got a call on Monday saying "Hey. Need that address that's local. Right now. Like yesterday, mmmkay? And why don't you have an address again?"

Spent all day yesterday looking at 9 townhouses, then today went to Hogwarts to show the principal - See? It's in your district. We are going to make an offer as soon as we leave you. Pinky swear!

I think everything is ok now. Kind of weird that you have to prove residency to meet these administrative deadlines 8 weeks before the next school year. So the principal (who turns out to be very nice!) is having to make a big exception for us. I kind of feel like we're pulling on over on people, but it's Hogwarts and we are going to live in that county. Pinky swear!

Kids and food

I saw this article on my friend's Facebook status and found it interesting. First, of course, was the more, um, salty quality of the language, which is not what I am used to from American newspapers. Second, though, was the impassioned criticism of McDonald's in particular and fast food in general. So first, a confession. My kids get fast food sometimes, especially when we are traveling. And I don't feel guilty about it.

But what does surprise me is how much of the rhetoric and action around the food industry revolves around control. Control of kids' minds. Control of the parent's wallet. Kids controlling parents. Kids out of control.

I try to be moderate about food. But I also try to teach my kids to make healthy choices. Offspring took her lunch 4 days a week last year mostly because I didn't like what they were serving in the cafeteria. In my mind, stadium nachos are not an adequate lunch entree. But I let her get it once a week. Next year, they will have candy and soda vending machines at school, something that was not allowed in Central State, and I've talked to her about the advisability of spending her money on empty calories. But I won't straight out forbid it.

We're struggling with Bun right now. Our policy is that the family eats what the family eats, and if you don't like it, you don't have to eat it, but there's no more food until the next meal. That being said, I try to make things people like. But Bun is trying out independence by refusing foods she used to like, and a few times this week, it's been a long. long slog until dinner.

As I've blogged about before, some of Offspring's friends are ridiculously picky eaters and even brag in front of me about how hard they make it for their parents to feed them. I don't want to go there, since I'm pretty sure a diet of exclusively chicken nuggets and boxed macaroni and cheese isn't the best fuel for a growing child. But I don't want to be a "steamed kale" mother like the one mocked in The Nanny Diaries, either.

But chocolate covered Barbie heads in a McDonald's wrapper seems a bit over the top.

If you have kids, what do you feed them?

Bumps in the road

So we convinced big city school district to let us actually enroll our child at Hogwarts, even though we don't have an address in the district (good thing I took those tap dancing lessons as a kid). I got and signed my contract. We are well on our way to having a place to live, and I think we will pretty much finalize that this week. I had to look up my course schedule for the fall on NewU's web site (does that seem odd to you? They never told me...) and they have me teaching three classes I will have to do a substantial amount of training for, as they use basket techniques I have a passing familiarity with, but I am not an expert in. I ordered some books from Amazon. I am not sure what exactly they want from the course description, so I wrote to the people who taught them last year, who each told me that class was taught for the first time last year, and now they want something different, but aren't sure what that is. That's comfortable.

Spouse's job is a bit of a mess. He was asked to come down and meet with the chair, who told him the state budget cuts were a lot worse than expected, and so he's not hiring for one of the two positions Spouse applied for. Spouse's position is looking like it will be safe, but no guarantees. And it doesn't look good for future years. He's pretty concerned, and really, so am I. His field of submarine racing has a robust industrial center located near the capital of New State, which is also within a reasonable commute of NewU, but on the other side and in another county from Hogwarts.

At least Bun is going to do great at crunchy granola Montessori.

Got the silver lining, looking for the cloud

So we have been looking for a school placement for Offspring, as I have blogged about before. I decided to take a little different approach and start with the district rather than picking where we want to live and working through the principal there. I wrote to the head of GT services for the county and said I wanted to see what we needed to do to get her a GT placement. It turned out to be the right thing to do.

We got a call yesterday, and they want to place Offspring in this special program for kids like her that’s offered 3 miles from Spouse’s office and has transportation from anywhere in the county. They don’t promote this program on their website, so I didn’t even know about it. We’re going to fill out paperwork tomorrow.

I’m sure there must be a downside, but I haven’t found it yet.

We are here, we are here, we are here, we are here!

So after a really grueling week of painting, scrubbing, packing and rearranging, we finally made it to Nice State today, where we are going to stay as long as we can. Optimistically, if the house sells quickly, we will have to go do the final move out. Hopefully, it will sell before August.

It was a good decision to not skip our time here this year. The girls were so excited to unpack our stuff - they wanted to do everything right away - take a bath with the Nice State bath toys, do multi-colored toe sparkles (their name for pedicures), go to the playground with the shovel, shoot bubbles with the bubble gun, solve all the puzzles.

It has the additional advantage of giving us some much needed space from the endless goodbye that being at home had become.

When we move, we are going to be about 3 hours from where we spend the summer, and I am so, so glad. We are going down to sign contracts on Thursday.

Baby steps

So we are not in the car on the way to nice state, as we had originally hoped. But we are getting close.

Pets are boarded. Lawn service engaged. Carpets and windows cleaned. School completed for all of us (actually, Bun's school was nice enough to let her stay an extra week when it became apparent that we couldn't get everything done as intended). One of the big reasons we aren't gone is that trash pickup was delayed a day because of the holiday. As you might imagine, we have quite a bit of trash (today, I cleaned out the refrigerator and freezer) and I want to make sure it goes out. Since we are usually a Friday pickup, that means Saturday morning.

I'm actually really glad Bun is at school this week because she is having a really hard time with the move. She's usually really flexible and happy, but having her room painted a different color, giving away our fish and coming home to fine our bird boarded really distressed her today. Poor little thing. I am hoping that our few weeks in Nice State before we move for good will give us some good family time and some much-needed perspective. Anyway, going to school is a nice piece of consistency in her life.

Today was spent signing the contracts with the realtor and cleaning out various, as my grandmother would call them, hidey holes - notably in the bathrooms and closets. I am nearly done with those.

We are having serious angst over Offspring's schooling next year. We are moving to a part of New State that has a pretty good school system overall and it really seems to shine in GT education (as an aside, we got to be proud parents on Tuesday as we let Offspring skip school and took her to Metropolis to get a medal from the smarty talent search she is in. There were about 200 kids there getting medals from our part of Central State, but Offspring was one of only 7 from the 5th-6th grades.

Anyway, Spouse's job and mine are in two different counties. We'd like to live in the middle to mutually minimize the commutes, but living on the Eastern edge of the county with good schools means sending Offspring to one of the schools in the district that's not exactly a superstar. They are a 5 on greatschools.net (the school she would have gone to here would have been a 6, so not much of a difference there), but the reviews indicate that there's a lot of fights and such, which would be uncommon to rare in the district she is in right now. Plus, there is a very strict dress code as a way to curb student behavior (secretly, I like this, as I would hope it would reduce somewhat the mean girlitude about clothing). So I don't know. There is a middle school that would be about 8 more minutes of driving for each of us, but is an 8 and much better rated by parents. So I hate to move to the more elite part of the county, when I should be doing my civic duty and participating in a school that I could help improve. But on the other hand, it's my kid and I want the best for her. So I don't know. I think we will try to visit all 3 candidates before making a decision.